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If you’ve taken part in Occupy Wall Street, then the New York County District Attorney’s Office might want to take a peek at your Twitter data.

The DA’s office has sent subpoenas to Twitter asking for the data of a handful of people arrested last year as part of the Occupy Wall Street protests. Twitter has been sending those users the text of the subpoenas via email.

Jeff Rae, an Occupier who received one of those emails, decided to publish it online.

URGENT: The District Attorney in NY has subpoenaed my twitter account ow.ly/9BmsC #ows #occupywallst #occupywallstreet

— Jeff Rae (@jeffrae) March 12, 2012

“We are writing to inform you that Twitter has received legal process. . .requesting information regarding your Twitter account, @jeffrae,” reads the email. “The legal process requires Twitter to produce documents related to your account.”

In the email, Twitter goes on to notify Rae that the company will respond to New York’s subpoena in seven days, unless he notifies Twitter that he intends to “quash” the legal process. It also suggests that Rae “may wish” to speak with a lawyer about the matter.

Attached to Twitter’s email was the subpoena itself, in which Twitter is “commanded” to hand over “all public tweets” from mid-September to the end of October of last year. The subpoena also requires Twitter to provide the name, address, session records, telephone number and temporary IP addresses associated with Rae’s account.

Rae, an organizer and labor activist, was arrested last October along with hundreds of other protesters when Occupy Wall Street attempted to cross the vehicle roadway of New York’s Brooklyn Bridge. He was charged with blocking traffic, improper use of a roadway and failure to obey orders.

Rae told Mashable that he’s going to file a motion against the DA’s request. Rae pointed out that all of his tweets are public, but he’s concerned that the second part of the subpeona, which demands information not publicly available, has negative implications for free speech.

The New York County District Attorney’s Office has declined to comment.

Twitter has complied with similar legal motions in the past. Earlier this month, they gave Boston’s District Attorney the data of a user who allegedly hacked the Boston Police Department.

You can view the Brooklyn Bridge protest email and subpoena below, courtesy Jeff Rae:

Twitter Subpoena

Image courtesy of sharply_done

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If you’ve tweeted a lot about the Occupy movement, the Syrian Protests or the Egyptian Revolution, Twitris may have considered what you said and recorded it.

Dr. Amit P. Sheth, director of the Kno.e.sis Center in Dayton, Ohio, developed the idea for Twitter research when he was monitoring what was happening in India as the Mumbai terrorist attacks unfolded in 2008. Sheth and students at Wright State University built Twitris, a web app that analyzes what’s being said on social media about natural disasters as they happen, current events and ongoing national news like the 2012 election.

In addition to providing general sentiments, Twitris also pulls news articles, Wikipedia articles and other Internet data to help readers better understand a particular event.

Related popular topics, hashtags, users and multimedia content — images and video — are collected on an interface that acts like a time capsule. Older events are archived, but searches for popular users, hashtags, places and sentiment analysis are available for further research or curiosity.

SEE ALSO: New Chrome Plugin Gives Instant Sentiment Analysis for Twitter Search Terms

About 46.5 million tweets from 4.7 million Twitter users have been processed. From the Occupy Wall Street events, about 4.1 million tweets were collected, so far.

To get the most accurate sentiments report, the team also incorporated slang and online urban dictionaries to hone in on Twitter sarcasm.

“For media, it provides [an] excellent opportunity to summarize [an] event, as well as monitor the evolution of the event from multiple dimensions,” Sheth said.

Twitris has analyzed 40 events including the Iran Election in 2009, Haiti Earthquake in 2010 and Occupy Wall Street starting at the end of 2011.

While the media gives an overarching account of events, said the Twitris development team, Twitris provides a deeper picture by summarizing social media data and by collecting news and multimedia.

For now, the team decides which events to follow. All tweets are collected automatically by the system by scanning Twitter’s streaming API, according to Dr. Sheth.

In the future, the team hopes to make a system with more search options. Election 2012 coverage on Twitris will debut in the next few weeks.

Are you curious to see what the world is saying about a particular event? Will you use Twitris? Tell us in the comments.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Palinopsia_Films

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Syria has undoubtedly been swept up in the Arab Spring, popular uprisings against dictatorial rulers that have spread throughout the Middle East since early last year. The country, ruled by Bashar al-Assad since 2000, has also been the site of the most brutal crackdowns against protesters. With foreign press barred from entering the country, Syrians and the rest of the world have been watching video from a single source: YouTube.

Early uprisings against Assad’s rule began in January of last year. The following March, an anti-Assad protest in a southern city was met with a violent suppression from government forces. Within hours, graphic video of the event was posted on YouTube. Since then, protests have occurred across Syria as the opposition coalesces into a more formal fighting force.

Meanwhile, Syrians who witness confrontations between government forces and protesters are uploading new videos every day.

On Saturday, Russia and China vetoed a United Nations Security Council resolution that would have called for Assad to step down. Earlier in the day, U.S. President Barack Obama personally urged Assad to step aside.

“Assad has no right to lead Syria, and has lost all legitimacy with his people and the international community,” said Obama.

Undeterred by calls to relinquish power, Assad’s government conducted a siege of the port city of Homs Monday, leaving approximately 29 civilians dead according to the AFP. Following the violence, the U.S. State Department announced the closing of its embassy in Syria’s capital.

As Syria teeters on the precipice of civil war, the world watches online. With foreign press agencies unable to send reporters or cameras, outsiders have been relying on video (along with telephone calls) recorded by Syrians on small camcorders and mobile devices and later uploaded to the web. These videos cannot be verified and they often include titles and descriptions with bias for their side of the conflict. But it’s difficult to ignore the raw visceral power of the footage.

Can these YouTube videos fill the media’s watchdog role in armed conflicts that are closed to the press? Clay Shirky, distinguished writer in residence at NYU Journalism, said that citizen journalism is a global trend not limited to autocratic societies experiencing tumult. He explained:

“There are three advantages to citizen video over what is produced by trained press. The first is that the first people on the scene of an event are usually citizens, so it is better for speed. The second is that there are more citizens than press, so it is better for coverage. The third is that it is harder to control citizens than press, so it is better for free speech.”

Shirky’s third point sticks out in reference to Syria. The video being uploaded by Syrians isn’t being subjected to any kind of government censorship. Shirky was, however, quick to point out that citizen journalism has limitations.

“The losses are image and sound quality, lack of access to military or political newsmakers, and lack of provenance (so policing fraud becomes more problematic),” he said.

The squashing of free speech and free press doesn’t only apply to autocratic regimes either.

“Reflect on the fact that the press was rendered toothless in covering the clearing out of the #OWS camp at Zuccotti, while the citizens were irreplaceable. In fact, one of my students who went down to cover the event brought his press pass, and realized that when he showed it, he got less access to the event, so he hid it and plunged into the crowd,” Shirky said.

We’ve included a gallery of footage from Syria throughout the uprising.

Do you think YouTube videos provide an acceptable replacement for press in Syria? Let us know in the comments below.

WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT We’ve left the descriptions intact, so that readers may better understand the intentions of the uploaders.

Syrian Revolution Damascus 15 March 2011

Syrian revolution rallies in Damascus on 15th March 2011

Click here to view this gallery.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, visual7

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Smacked with yet another subpoena, Twitter must submit an Occupy protestor’s account information to the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office — unless the account holder can stop the order before Feb. 8.

The District Attorney’s Office issued a subpoena for Malcolm Harris (at the Twitter handle @destructuremal) on Jan. 26.

Harris is the managing editor for the blog The New Inquiry, which seeks to explore ideas through criticism and examination. He alleges via Twitter that the District Attorney’s Office is only requesting three-and-a-half months of his account information because of a disorderly conduct violation he was slapped with during the Brooklyn Bridge protest and subsequent arrests

“I’m not sure why they’ve singled me out, but I’m not too worried,” Harris told Mashable. “The charge against me is disorderly conduct, which is a violation, not even a misdemeanor, for blocking traffic, just like the other 700 people arrested. ”

Harris is due to appear in court for that violation on Feb. 29.

The District Attorney’s Office declined to comment on this issue. Mashable also asked if the DA would subpoena Twitter for account information for the hundreds of other people arrested on the Brooklyn Bridge during the protests. The office declined to comment.

It’s not clear from the subpoena what specific information the District Attorney’s Office is looking for. If Twitter does not hand over Harris’ account information from Sept. 15, 2011 to Dec. 31, 2011 executives could serve one year in prison and face a (nominal for Twitter) $1,000 fine.

In his stream of tweets, Harris thanks Twitter for informing him of the request for his account information even though it says not to.

He tweeted, “Don’t worry @twitter, when they ask how I got the subpoena, I’ll just tell them a little birdy told me.”.

Harris said that he hopes he can prevent the order from being carried out and send a message to protestors that it’s safe to use Twitter for protests.

“But if we win, it’s a sign to protesters that what they say online doesn’t just belong to the government to use against them,” he said.

Harris said he’s pleased with the way Twitter has handled this issue.

“Twitter so far has been really great, actually. They broke the gag order at the bottom of the subpoena to send it to me, and have agreed pending a motion to quash it not to move forward on disclosure,” Harris says. “Twitter could have just provided that information to the DA without telling me, and I may not have found out until my own words were being used against me in a court of law.

“I’m not usually one to hand out any sort of credit to social media giants, but they definitely saved me from a surprising trial.”

A Twitter spokesperson Mashable reached out to declined to comment, but said, “to help users protect their rights, it’s our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so. We outline this policy in our law enforcement guidelines.”

Twitter’s policies dictate that the company will comply with government-issued subpoenas but inform users before giving their information to the government, unless the request is accompanied by a statute or gag order to keep it quiet.

In December of last year, the Boston District Attorneys Office issued a subpoena for two Twitter accounts of alleged protestors. The Boston DA revealed its lack of knowledge about social media when it requested a user’s name and handle, plus two hashtags. Twitter also informed those account holders of the request for information despite the fact that it was made private.

Earlier this month, the state of Texas issued a subpoena to Automattic, Inc., the creators of free blogging platform WordPress.com, to access an occupy supporter’s blog and reveal the person’s identity.

You can view all three subpoenas here: [Scribd account].

What do you think about the government issuing subpoenas to Twitter for user information? Tell us in the comments.

More About: occupy, Occupy Wall Street, online information, subpoena, Twitter

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Here’s a new tactic for Occupy Wall Street protesters to consider: dressing up as zombies for a mass performance of “Thriller”.

That’s what thousands of members of Chile’s growing student protest movement did in June, gathering for a Michael Jackson-inspired flash mob outside the home of President Sebastian Pinera. Videos of the performance have gone viral in Chile, with multiple YouTube posts gaining tens of thousands of views each.

It’s hardly the first time an international Thriller tribute video has hit YouTube; the most notable was created by prison inmates in the Philippines in 2008. But this may be the first example that was linked to a specific protest.

Chilean students, upset over the fees charged by their country’s largely privatized school system, are leveraging social media in a unique way, according to Katie Manning, a reporter for a group of online newspapers in Chile called Mi Voz.

Chilean students are “pushing beyond the social-networking boundaries established by other global protests,” Manning writes Monday on Wired.

When protesters occupied the Chilean Senate building last month, urging a national vote on education issues, they livestreamed the sit-in via YouTube, as well as a service called TwitCasting.tv, offering a more complete picture than the quick clips typically shown on local television networks.

Students have turned to social media as not just an organizing tool, but a way to tell their stories “without the censorship that occurs in traditional media,” says one activist.

Social media is extremely popular in Chile, according to the research firm comScore. Chilean student protesters have launched an English-only Twitter account to better communicate with reporters, sympathizers and observers around the globe.

While the mass “Thriller” performance may have generated the most buzz so far, even that moment came with some calculated serious undertones, according to one student quoted at the time.

“Public education is dying, so we took this Michael Jackson creation and we united to this movement that is dying, the zombies,” he said. “At its heart, that’s what it is. And behind each zombie, there’s a family. This has much deeper meaning.”

So allegorical zombies going viral on YouTube — that may be a page the Internet-savvy Occupy movement can take from the Chilean students’ playbook.

What do you think about Chile’s use of social media? Is it really much different from that of Occupy protesters and other global movements in Greece, Spain, Libya and elsewhere? And could “Thriller”-themed protests catch on worldwide?

More About: chile, Occupy Wall Street, Social Media, thriller, Twitter, zombies

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The web has given the meme treatment to the police officer who doused students with pepper spray at the University of California, Davis, during a local Occupy Wall Street protest.

Over the weekend, a video showing the Nov. 18 incident enraged many viewers. Since then, the school’s faculty association called for the resignation of the chancellor, and the campus police chief as well as two unidentified police officers were put on leave pending an investigation.

Now that Internet users have laid off meme-ifying Rick Perry’s brain fart, they’re focusing their time on the chemical can-wielding police officer. The web’s newest meme is known as “Casually Pepper Spray Everything Cop” on KnowYourMeme, popping up in familiar photos and popular works of art such as Georges Seurat’s “A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” (see image number two below).

SEE ALSO: “Le Internet Medley” References 40+ Memes in One Music VideoYou can also see him making appearances on WeKnowMemes and these three Tumblr blogs: JockoHomo, KnowYourMeme

More About: Meme, Occupy Wall Street, trending

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The Faculty Association at the University of California, Davis, is calling for the resignation of chancellor Linda Katehi after a YouTube video surfaced showing police pepper spraying passive Occupy Wall Street protesters.

“The Chancellor’s authorization of the use of police force to suppress the protests by students and community members speaking out on behalf of our university and public higher education generally represents a gross failure of leadership,” the Davis Faculty Association wrote in a blog post on Saturday. The post goes on to criticize Katehi for “effectively authorizing [the police's] use of excessive force against peaceful UCD student protestors.”

The call for Katehi’s resignation comes after various videos showing police pepper spraying OWS protesters hit YouTube late Friday, shortly after it occurred. In response, Katehi announced on Saturday that she had created a task force to investigate the police’s action.

According to reports, police had asked the protesters to move and then warned them if they didn’t, they’d be pepper sprayed. Soon afterwards, they carried out their threat and the moment was captured on video.

More About: Occupy Wall Street, YouTube

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A disturbing video of passive Occupy Wall Street protesters at University of California, Davis, getting pepper sprayed by police made the rounds Saturday afternoon on YouTube.

By mid-afternoon, several versions of the video, shot on Friday, were being circulated. In the video above, an officer displays the pepper spray can before spraying it at protesters who are seated with their heads down. After that, cries are heard from the crowd. As the protesters are arrested, some in the crowd shout “Shame on you” at the officers.

Pepper spray is often used for crowd control and usual causes tears, pain and even temporary blindness, but rarely causes death or lasting harm.

Update: The chancellor of the University of California, Davis, announced on Saturday that the school launching a probe into the incident.”The use of the pepper spray as shown on the video is chilling to us all and raises many questions about how best to handle situations like this,” Chancellor Linda Katehi said in a message posted on the school’s web site.

The distribution of the video comes as public support for OWS has slipped in recent weeks. A survey last week by Public Policy Polling found 35% of Americans support OWS and 45% oppose the movement. When PPP took the same poll last month, only 36% of respondents were against OWS.

Though the video would seem to present the protesters in a more sympathetic light, it’s unclear how it’s being received. For instance, YouTube commenters for the video above overwhelmingly “liked” it, though many comments were in support of the protesters and critical of the police.

What do you think? Let us know in the comments.

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Updated: A judge has ruled against the Occupy Wall Street protesters, meaning that the protesters will not be allowed to camp in the park, the New York Daily News reports.

The Occupy Wall Street movement in New York City is awaiting the decision from a judge that could allow it to stay in Zuccotti Park for good.

Early Tuesday morning, the New York Police Department removed OWS protesters from the park on order of Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Since then, the movement has returned and issued a temporary order against the police department.

Judge Michael Stallman heard the case, and indicated that a decision will be issued by 3:15 p.m. ET (although that time has come and gone with no decision). The outcome will determine whether police must allow protestors into the now barricaded park.

Word spread quickly during the night of the NYPD’s action, and news has been coming in throughout the day about the events and whereabouts of protestors. Search #ows in Twitter and you’ll find a steady update of information.

We’re awaiting the announcement of Judge Stallman’s verdict, and will keep an eye on Twitter’s reaction as it happens.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Atomische • Tom Giebel

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#OWS End Right Now

Click here to view this gallery.

If you were watching Twitter last night and this morning, then you already know: the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York is — at least temporarily — no more. Early this morning, New York City police cleared Occupy Wall Street protesters out of downtown Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park. Protesters have been there for almost two months.

Word of the action spread quickly last night, as most people outside the general vicinity learned about the movement’s eviction from the private park and then followed along for the next several hours via Twitter.

Occupy Wall Street launched in September and has since spread to cities across the U.S. Organizers and participants are protesting, among other things, what they see as the lack of equity in the American economic system, with, they contend, 1% of the population controlling a vast portion of the wealth. In addition to Twitter, #OccupyWallStreet has used Facebook to organize and Kickstarter to raise funds. Organizers have worked to build out its own mini-Internet in the Park and even launched Hackathons to develop new digital innovations to support their cause. Twitter has, though, remained an important part of the movement’s outreach and communication. It’s also been the way many people outside Occupy Wall Street have kept tabs on OWS movements dotted across the country (Occupy Oakland’s was apparently, also cleared out last night).

Do a quick Search for #OWS on search.twitter.com and you’ll see a steady flow of tweets first detailing the movement of NYPD into the park, as they forced protesters out and then dismantled the encampment and all of its equipment.

Tweets ranged from stunned outrage and eye-witness accounts to #OccupyWallStreet organizers planning new occupation zones, protests and marches. There were also a couple of Tweets from NYC Mayor Bloomberg announcing the police action. Later Bloomberg held a press conference, its salient points were also live-Tweeted by a multitude. Here we’ve collected some of the more interesting #OWS Tweets.

How did you learn about New York City’s decision? Were you shocked and did you Tweet about it? Share you reactions in the comments below.

Image courtesy of Flickr, Atomische • Tom Giebel

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